If ones worth was already set in stone, pre-determined by the world in fate and destiny, then where did that leave the progress of the human soul?

One can start as pristine and beautiful as a morning sky, only to end as twisted and cold as the steel humans used as a structurally sound form of Plasticine.

If destiny was an already pre-determined concept, one that meant ones fate was already assigned a specific meaning, then Amaya had no idea what her own pitiful life would add up to.

What purpose was hurdling these troubles towards her every step of the way intending to serve?

If all destiny had in store for her was the painfully familiar turmoil of drowning every step of the way, then she was going reject the very idea.

If all destiny wanted of her was to drown, then she was going to fight it every step of the way.

Voices peppered the darkness that had engulfed her, muffled through the oceans of her inner world as she slowly rose to consciousness.

She couldn't quite make out the words, though one sounded frightened – Almost to the point of terror.

Pain ripped through her head in pulsing bouts as she managed to slowly open her eyes, a dull pain that merely flared up from a careless movement.

Amaya remained motionless there on what she could depict to be concrete flooring, her gaze unseeing through the dark.

The fogginess inside her head was starting to clear well, and where she was she didn't feel too bad.

Just a little cold on one side, as if she were lying on something damp.

A wince flashed across her face as she tried to move the wrong way, and she curled a little more on her side

It was here that she found her knees and ankles tied together, and her hands tied behind her back. And, almost as if to add insult to injury, she'd been gagged with a piece of cloth. Even if her legs had not been tied together, she was in quite the bind, regardless.

She retraced her memories, something always best to do after an obvious hit to the head.

It didn't take her very long to do, either.

She recalled she'd been jumped walking back home, out of her own stupidity no less. Struck from behind with a plank of 2x4 timber to the back of the head, and a kick to the head to knock her completely out when they'd noticed she was still conscious.

Other than that, there was nothing else.

Everything else was black before she'd woken up, and she was rather certain of that.

The smell to the air was stagnate, metallic with moisture and grime, and her eyes picked up on nothing to help her identify her surroundings.

And yet, her ears slowly picked up on the voices that had brought her edging towards consciousness in the beginning.

'Are you kidding?! Do you have any idea just who that broad is!?' A rather distraught voice practically shouted, his voice reverberating down what seemed to be a corridor or some similar form of space.

'The hell you whining about? Cut it out already.' A second questioned.

'No! You don't get it! Bringing her here is the worst thing you've ever done, you stupid bastard!'

'Seriously, just cut the crap, ya prissy woman!' A third voice rung bitterly. 'She's just some bitch we were told t'drag in, what's got ya--'

'You were told to bring her here?! By who?!'

'Aint it obvious? One of the bosses ordered it, so we went and jumped her.' The second, more bemused voice responded with a sigh. 'I don't see what about her's got you so freaked, Ota whacked her without even having to chase her down. And nobody was around to see it all go down, either.'

So, this Ota or whatever his name was happened to be the one who clobbered her, and likely was the one who kicked her in the head to finish the job, too.

'You stupid bastard! Dealing with her is bad enough! Y'don't want that bastard coming to look for her, too!'

'We're sixty strong, what suicidal fool's gonna come looking for her?'

'You're that conceded in numbers?!' The practically terrified male shouted in horror. 'Jesus, I'm not hanging around to end up swallowin' my teeth! You bastards are on your own!'

'Oi! You know what Wada's gonna do to you if you lea--'

The slamming of a door was sign enough that the panicked male did not care enough to listen.

So, two names she had to track down and deal with most importantly were Wada and Ota, as a definite.

The knock to the head was trouble enough for her to deal with, but it didn't feel severe enough to stop her from putting up a fight. She couldn't come up with a plan now that she'd been abducted like this – They'd gotten the jump on her before she could have strung anything together.

Which meant she had to improvise - Which wasn't exactly a bad thing, as she was far better at that, than actually planning anything.

'Ueda!' A new voice barked out in the same direction that the voices had come from, a clear sign that the other side of the door to this room was a corridor. 'Orders from above, bring the woman into the interrogation room. If she isn't awake, you've got permission to break some fingers to get her conscious.'

'Got it.' The more blaze male spoke in response.

How terrifyingly lacking in imagination.

The sounds of grinding steel echoed faintly as slivers of light began to appear and illuminate the room she was within. Old, brick walls damaged with water runoff, steel beams placed to hold up the stone ceiling up above were the features of the room.

Footsteps wandered over, boot-clad feet clunking hard against the concrete floor before she felt the form now standing over her roll her onto her back with the toe of his boot.

The silhouette of a somewhat stocky male seemed to stare down at her for a few seconds.

'Get to your feet, woman.' The form who Amaya guessed was called Ueda barked bitterly, a rather battered looking baseball bat hanging from his right hand. 'I don't want to have to use force if I don't have to.'

The stupidity of this fool was enough that all Amaya could do was fix him with a frown.

'I ordered you to get up, damnit!' Ueda spat, a little louder.

'Dude, you're making it hard on the bitch.' The more crudely spoken male who'd been arguing earlier remarked, earning Ueda's confused attention. 'She'd probably do as you tell her if you bothered to untie her.'

'I ain't untying her!'

Why did she have to get stuck with the dumb delinquent like this?

With the most obvious roll of her eyes, Amaya managed to lift her legs just enough to let them drop loudly to the floor, the only sign she could give this moron that she certainly didn't have the capacity to comply right now.

'Oh...' Ueda huffed as he discarded the bat onto the floor and moved to untie Amaya's ankles, thankfully. 'Who the hell tied her up that much?'

'That would be you, shithead.'

'Oh.'

Amaya could only sigh as she realized this was a case of stupidity strong enough to fuel gullibility.

She hoped the majority of these people weren't so freaking stupid.

They had to have at least a sense of intelligence for any true trauma to sink in on them. Excessively stupid people were harder to terrify.

With the ropes removed from around Amaya's ankles and knees, she was finally able to regain a little more circulation to her rather cold limbs.

Though before she had a chance to even appreciate the absence of the ropes, she was grabbed by the front of the shirt and dragged to her feet.

'I've untied you, so get walking.' Ueda muttered as he shoved her towards the open door.

The two burly guys called Ueda and who she was now calling Spork for lack of a more appropriate name walked behind her, with Ueda jabbing her harshly in the back with his battered baseball bat whenever she wasn't walking fast enough, or if he wanted to shove her down a different expansive corridor.

They walked for seemingly endless minutes until the corridor opened up into a huge and seemingly abandoned train tunnel, where Amaya was shoved off the edge of the floor onto the tracks a meter below.

She made no move to inspect the scenery for an escape route – She wouldn't get far if she decided to run right now.

They walked for many meters, through darkness illuminated only by a cellular telephone's flashlight.

Amaya guessed this was probably where those so called disappearances had ended up, and whether they were still here or had been disposed of was something she wasn't willing to look into.

The faintest hints of clattering overhead and what sounded like a working train were the only sounds that told Amaya that at least, they were somewhere that public transport was working.

But for how long was the question.

Eventually, Amaya was shoved through a doorway leading into a much smaller corridor than the one she'd been lead out from.

Past three doors with a large chorus of jeering voices she was lead, into a small room at the end of the corridor.

The door was already open, showing a simple straight-backed chair, ropes, and a simple table with a rather battered looking computer chair situated in front of it.

As expected, she was roughly forced to sit down on that straight-backed wooden chair, and ropes were tied around her knees and waist, tying her to the chair.

And then, the door was slammed shut, leaving her in darkness.

As minutes passed by slowly, all Amaya could honestly do was let out a muffled snicker behind the strip of cloth she'd been gagged with.

These guys really did lack imagination.

And Ueda sucked at actually thinking at all – She knew that for a fact as she squirmed her legs within the ropes a little until they just fell free to the floor. He failed to actually tie her legs to the actual chair legs, instead just wrapping the ropes in multiple loops.

It was just the ropes around her waist that were harder – She needed her hands free to be able to remove those ones.

Though the moron had gone and tied the ropes just like one would for shoelaces, which was not difficult to manage in the slightest.

It was so pathetic, she was only able to really snicker to herself when in reality, she should really be apprehensive about being abducted like that.

They had no idea what the hell they were even doing – Were the so called corrupt cops killing this group's targets and covering it up for them all at once?

If this got any more pathetic, Amaya was sure she was going to start getting horribly bored.

But perhaps this was for the best.

Carefully, so she didn't make too much noise or move too much, Amaya maneuvered her arms a little so she could start to unravel what she soon learned were poorly done knots holding a massive wad of rope bound around her wrists.

She had to thank Ueda for being terrible at tying ropes.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to kick his teeth down his throat when she got out of her bindings, though.

As the minutes ticked by, and the ropes were loosened enough for her to start untying some of the more accessible knots, Amaya got a somewhat clear idea of what the general balance of views this sizable gang had.

She had heard the louder number cheer and boast on about their "wonderful" bosses taking charge, and every now and then she heard disgruntled and fearful voices whispering outside the door about how they were going to escape this hell. One even mentioned something about how they should have "gone with Ito" when they had the chance, and how it was only because they hadn't that "Imai, Takagi and Fukuda" got such a tight foothold on everyone.

The number of different voices she heard on either side gave Amaya a somewhat vague, but appropriate indication of the two sides of the fence.

In percentages, that was 30-50 in favor of the obnoxious ones in the larger count, and 20 approx that might be just going with the flow.

So, if she had to make a guess, she had probably ten, maybe fifteen delinquents who would probably take her attack as an opportunity to either reap hell as well, or the more likely scenario, they'd probably flee and never come back.

Which meant it wasn't sixty odd people she had to traumatize beyond recovery – It was closer to forty, which was a number she appreciated a little better.

With that in mind, she close her eyes and began to focus on the one thing she had never thought she'd wanted to do in her whole life.

She began to focus on drawing out those familiar sensations she loathed more than anything else, that bubbling, boiling rage she had to live with possibly rearing its ugly head once again.

Meditate wasn't the right word for it, but it was probably the closest to describe what she was trying to do.

Her anger issues had become far and few between ever since she'd come back from Berlin, what was left of that had been numbed down and gradually worn away. The remaining causes of her anger switches were so very isolated that they were hard to draw upon.

Her hatred for her father was now outweighed by her fear of him, and there was nobody else she hated anywhere near as much.

Fear and Frustration were the two most prominent things left, and neither of those were constructive in the way she needed.

As she'd managed to loosen the third knot, leaving what felt like half of the total knots in all to untie, the door opened with a soft groan, flooding the room with light bright enough to cause her to wince and turn her head away.

'Oho, our little guest is awake, huh?' A rather smug voice spoke up, that of which belonged to a person she had never encountered before in her life. 'Well now, I think we should get acquainted with each other. Just let me get that light.'

The overhead light snapped on with blinding intensity, flickering for a few seconds before it settled on a more incandescent hue. The bright light half blinded her to her surroundings, though she discretely continued to slowly work the knots loose.

The door shut behind this new delinquent she couldn't quite see just yet, and she heard the rattling of worn wheels echo for a second to stop right in front of her.

'You look kinda foreign, I've never seen white hair before. Kinda like a white rabbit.' The delinquent muttered as he dropped himself onto the chair now in front of her. 'Let's get a look at your face.'

She was grabbed sharply by a handful of her hair at the back of her head, drawing an agonized gasp from behind her gag as the delinquent tugged on her tender scalp to force her head back.

She couldn't help the watering of her eyes as the wound inflicted was aggravated without care.

'Huh, no, you look Japanese. But that ain't bleached, either – Your eyebrows and eyelashes are just as white.' The grip of her hair tightened even worse as she managed to crack open an eye to look up at who this bastard was.

A moderately slender build, average appearances with short black hair and black eyes. He looked a year older than her, no more.

And she could detect a malignant edge to the look in his eyes.

If she was a betting girl, she'd put her money on this guy being one of the three she had to do away with.

'Well, having a rare-looking woman sounds like just what I need.' He remarked as he finally released the back of her head, though his hands were next sliding to untie the gag. 'Maybe I won't do away with you like the others.'

Great, a narcissistic sleazebag, just what she needed...

A greedy narcissist, but on the plus side he looked very green.

Just like Hayashi had said...

It looked like she had to try and find some way to tip herself into the deep end soon, before her loosening bindings were noticed by this cretin.

...Maybe he could help with that?

'Nows your chance to squawk, woman, so I suggest you do.' This nameless delinquent Amaya now dubbed as a Chihuahua remarked as he let the gag fall loose to hang around her neck, providing Amaya with a small few seconds to take a proper breath of air. 'I would rather keep you than have to carve out your entrails.'

Amaya took one more look at him, and all she could do was snicker.

'You don't look like you have the balls to even try it.' She had said before she could even hold her tongue, earning a solid slap across the face in response.

Not even the sharp pain ringing through her head was enough to stop the wry chuckle from escaping her.

'Its a pity your words are nowhere near as pleasant as your voice – That's a drawback I can live with, though.'

Classic power-trip junkie – Amaya wasn't the least bit surprised some greenhorn delinquent had gone so stupid the moment he got power.

'Trust me, a lot of people actually appreciate my brand of blatant cynicism.'

Another slap was struck across her face, yielding much the same chuckle from her none the less.

Unfortunately for the delinquent and Amaya's anger requirements, this was amusing her more than actually frightening her.

With the final knot loosened enough for her to wrench her hands free if she needed to, she shook her head slightly as she focused on fueling herself onwards.

'What's the matter? Can't stroke your pathetic ego with a woman giving you sass?'

A third slap was inflicted, though it didn't fuel that anger she needed to wield.

She needed to take a different approach...

'I want answers, and depending on what answers you give me, I will consider not doing away with you and your siblings.' Chihuahua informed her, leaning back in his chair as he eyed her up and down. 'I'd rather keep you for myself.'

A glimmer of agitation overcame her at the mention of harming her siblings, though it wasn't strong enough for her to latch onto.

She inwardly knew he had merely made a remark, nothing more.

'Well that depends on what you want to know...' She trailed off as she hung her head, a chuckle threatening to escape her as she returned to her anger-fueling. 'I subscribe to dishing out truth over fiction, regardless of whether all the listener wants is their superiority complex to be sated. And I don't like sugarcoating things for a princess who needs to eat a little bit of concrete.'

This time, it was a boot-clad foot she copped in the stomach, though it hurt less than the slap to the face.

Proximity to her head-wound was the likely reason.

'Tell me, why were you asked by Hayashi Ito for help?' Chihuahua commanded as he relieved her from his boot pressed against her stomach. 'What possible reason would that fool have to ask a mere woman for help as if it was his sole chance to escape me.'

Ah, not only was he stupid with a superiority complex, but he looked down on females, too.

'Dunno, maybe your foul stench was enough to make him beg for a woman to clean the filth up for him?' Amaya drawled out with seething sarcasm as she lowered her head a little more. 'After all, we humble women are only good for meager servant duties for our more superior counterparts.'

'Stop spouting such foul words, or I will silence you with the removal of your tongue!'

'Awww, but then I won't be able to tell you the answers to what you want to know~'

She could tell she was getting on this guy's nerves early on, but she hadn't quite expected to hear his chair crash across the room as he slammed her back against the chair.

Well, she'd been wanting to fuel her own anger, not his.

Of course her smart-mouthing would do opposite to what she wanted.

'This is growing more tedious than I'd like...' The delinquent drawled out as he took her roughly by the chin with one hand, his right knee lifting to press painfully into her stomach. All the while, his free hand pulled out a knife from his belt and raised it towards her face. 'I had thought you might be reasonable and not give me a reason to hurt all your loved ones, but you leave me no choice.'

Amaya's gaze hardened upon the angered male currently pressing the razor-edge of his knife to the bottom of her right eye socket, hard enough to begin to have blood bead along its blade.

'My people have already gotten a hold of your siblings, I'll have you know. All three of them! They're just itching to break their tiny little bodies to pieces.' The delinquent sneered, running the edge of his blade down the side of her face slowly. 'They're crying for you, I hear. So why don't you do the right thing and yield to me?'

A harsh scoff escaped her, surprising him - he seemed to reel back slightly in shock.

'Do you really think I'm that fucking stupid?' Her harsh rebuke reverberated through her tone as she struggled not to lose grip on the glimmer of anger his blatant threat had brought to life. 'I raised my siblings myself, and they know for a fact that if I give them the day off from school, there's some twisted jerkoff just like you who's gonna come knocking, so they don't open any door for anyone.'

'We took your keys off your unconscious body hours ago – They didn't even have to let my people inside.'

'My keys mean sweet fuck all with all those keyless deadbolts there on the inside!' Amaya spat, her anger beginning to swell. 'You have no fucking idea who the hell I am to even know the lengths taken to ensure my family stay safe!'

He seemed to think on that for a few seconds, before he pressed his knife back against the already-cut skin beneath her eye.

'I suppose I should stop trying to bait you into believing a short-handed lie...' He drawled, his hand holding her chin tightening as he forced her head to the right slightly. 'Cliche are a little boring, so let's rip out one of your eyes and send it to your siblings, right now! I'm sure one of them will open that door and let all of my people inside just to stop me from ripping the other out!'

'And then?' She questioned without humor.

'And then?' He repeated, before a sneer spread across his face. 'After I force you to submit like the worthless female you are, I'll make sure my people take real good care of your siblings and show them their place in the world.'

'And that would be, what? Sitting in dank, damp train-tunnels wasting their lives away like you pathetic lot?'

'I hear one of your siblings is a girl. Still young, but that's only now.' The delinquent began after a few seconds, straightening up slightly as he shifted his knife upwards to her brow. 'Given a few years with you out of the picture, I'm sure she'd be the perfect gang bitch to have around – Lifeless, uneducated, and perfect for all the boys to have their way with. That's all your species is good for, after all.'

Amaya clenched her hands tightly, her nails biting into the soft flesh of her palms as she kept as straight an expression as she could.

Not yet – She couldn't snot this bastard just yet.

'Aww, what's the matter?' He mocked her, a vitriol glint dancing in his eye as he lowered his face towards hers. 'Did I hit a nerve? It's only right you women learn your place – It's a shame your father didn't do you the favor and beat that sense into you when you were still a snot-nosed brat.'

Instead of the blood-boiling snap of outrage she was familiar with, she didn't respond at first.

The anger that he'd been starting to prod at ever since he'd mentioned her siblings had latched on, however it was different to every other instance it had come to life.

This time she had been trying to draw it out instead of push it away. This time she was completely connected to every sensation, though not entirely in control.

And all she could do at first was let out a harrowing giggle as she hung her head.

'Wh-what the hell is wrong with you?!' The delinquent demanded as he pulled his knife away from her face, utter bewilderment engulfing his entire being. 'Have you lost your fucking mind or something?'

'There it is...' Her voice had lowered slightly as she chuckled darkly to herself.

And then, faster than the delinquent could even react, she ripped her hands free from the ropes and slammed her fist straight into his solarplex with all of her strength.

The knife clattered to the floor at Amaya's feet as the nameless delinquent crashed a few feet away, gasping and wheezing, completely stunned as Amaya casually untied the ropes around her waist. Bile and froth were dripping from the fallen's mouth as he struggled to ride out the initial pain of what was undoubtedly a couple of cracked ribs and a bruised heart.

But unfortunately for him, Amaya wasn't finished with him.

She slowly bent down to pick up the knife he'd been casually cutting her face with for the past five minutes, smearing the handle with red that leaked from rope burns.

'You failed on more than one instance, while you were conducting this so called "interrogation" on me.' Amaya spoke pleasantly as she moved to stand over the delinquent's prone form, his knife dangling loosely from her right hand. 'You didn't want information. All you wanted was to force dominance to reinforce that petty little desire you have to be top dog here.'

Amaya took this moment to slam her right foot down on the delinquent's right knee, shattering the bones in his leg with one chilling crunch.

A blood-curdling howl of pain escaped her captor turned-victim as he writhed there on the floor, bringing Amaya to slam her foot then against his shoulder to force him still. Another crunch echoed, quieter than the last, though sign enough that something had broken.

'But worse than your stupid ego stroking was the most fundamental mistake you could have ever made.' She continued on as she crouched down over him, as if the delinquent was still listening to every word she spoke. 'You never even bothered to ask me what my name was, and considering how conceited and sure of yourself you are, you never even searched my bag and read my Student ID, either. Just so you know, I have a very prominent reputation, and it's exactly for that reputation that "Hayashi" was begging me for help, yesterday.'

He made an attempt at throwing her off, though he was far too slow.

Wracked with pain and surfacing fear of what he was now learning to be rather lethal, he couldn't move his hand away in time as she thrust the blade of his own knife through his palm, pinning his hand to the ground with a thud.

'Have you ever heard of murphy's law? I think its rather appropriate to use as a description for your current predicament.' Amaya continued on as she straightened up, the scream from the delinquent falling on rather deaf ears as she looked down at him.

Her left hand grabbed the delinquent by the throat, her other bringing his face up so he was looking at her.

'Y-you psycho bitch...' He wheezed out, though she could see the growing fear in his gaze.

And then she cast him an innocent smile.

'Murphy's law pertains to the theory that if something can go wrong, then it will. And guess what? You just had to pick Katsuragi Amaya to abduct and threaten.'

As soon as she'd given her name, undiluted terror and recognition appeared in his eyes.

He'd heard enough about her to realize that he had well and truly screwed up.

And then, with a malevolent giggle, Amaya closed her hands around his throat. He choked and struggled beneath her as she squeezed his throat beneath her bloodied hands, tightening until all oxygen had been cut off.

Barely able to jostle her with his body already broken to such a state, it was less than a minute before his body had gone limp beneath her.

She was barely able to pry her trembling hands from around his throat, her swelling fury within compelled her to keep tightening and snap his neck beneath her fingers.

The only way she could manage to do that was the reminder that there were other breathing bodies in this place she needed to deal with.

She left him lying there in that broken, and undoubtedly traumatized state on the floor as she opened the door and wandered outside.

Outside of this room, it became clear why nobody had come running at the sound of the nameless delinquent's screams.

The painfully loud sounds of cheering, yelling and arguing rung throughout the corridor from the other doors leading off from this corridor.

And through the blood, grime and stagnate air, she could pick up on the distinct odors of alcohol and junk food.

Most of these brainless fools were already on the grog, too loud to notice anything wrong.

Far too conceded to consider that something could go very wrong.

Two doors were open, the two where the majority of the human stink was coming from, and one with a moderate form of volume was shut.

Her fading sense of rationality told her she should go for the closed door, though the darkening anger that continued to grow and escape the fading self control compelled her towards the others.

And then, the door directly to her left opened, revealing a group of three delinquent around her own age.

'Oh? The hell are you doin' out of your ropes?' The closest of the three questioned, apparently sensing no issue from the matter of fact tone to his voice. 'You can't go wanderin' round gettin' yourself lost, you know.'

'Huh?! WHAT THE?!' Another voice yelped out from one of the open doors just down the corridor. 'I TIED YA UP IN THE INTERROGATION ROOM! HOW THE HELL'D YOU GET OUT OF THEM ROPES?!'

As the attention of the three delinquents originally here were snatched up by Ueda's sudden exclamation, Amaya threw herself forward in a lunge towards the closest of the three.

With all the strength she could throw into her strike, she hurled the delinquent over a shoulder by his arm, and with one swift motion, she twisted his arm back with a chilling crunch until it snapped.

A deafening shriek of agony escaped the sprawled delinquent as she threw herself towards the next, stepping on one foot to trip him up as he tried to put distance between himself and her.

Her other foot lifted to smash forward against the front of the delinquent's knee, snapping it backwards with just as chilling a crunch as the other delinquent's arm.

'Y-you bitch!' Ueda shrieked out as he came tearing towards her, baseball raised to clip her straight over the head.

Unfortunately for him, she didn't bother to try and avoid his haphazard attempt – All she did, even in her blood-fueling state was throw herself into a roundhouse kick aimed straight for his head.

She caught one of his arms as her kick had landed with force, ripping the baseball bat from his grip as he took a tumble towards the floor.

And with one well-forced swing, she brought the metal bat down hard over his head, smashing all consciousness from his grip.

A trembling, almost petrified form still standing at one of the doors caught Amaya's lacking attention, bringing her to recall that there had been a fourth in this room.

He looked even younger than her.

He let out a strangled yelp as she lifted her head to look at him, absolute terror radiating form his trembling form.

'W-wait! Please!' The obviously green delinquent yelped out, stumbling backwards against the wall as he tried in vain to put more distance between himself and Amaya. 'I swear I'll never come here again! Please! I don't even want to be here!'

Did he believe just admitting defeat would get immunity from her?

'Is that the only door out of this area?' Amaya questioned, motioning towards the heavy steel door with the wheel-operated lock.

Frantically, the green delinquent shook his head.

'N-n-no, there's a manhole access i-in one of the rooms.' He practically squeaked out. 'Please! Just let me go home!'

She stared him down for a few seconds, before she turned her attention towards one of the open doors just down the corridor.

'Lock the door.' She commanded as she ambled onwards for the closest of the open doors. 'I don't want anyone else getting out of here unscathed...'

The delinquent didn't need telling twice – He tore off down the corridor as if his life depended on it, and swung the iron door at the end shut.

The sounds of metal grinding and the groaning of old gears moving were the only sounds that occurred to Amaya as she found herself losing her self control to the anger that had been gradually growing inside of her.

She couldn't keep track of what was going on anymore.

All she could do was make use of the fact that there was only one easy way out of this place, and that had just been locked down from the outside.

For her siblings ... she would do this.

She didn't want to hurt anyone anymore, but she had to.

She had to force herself to become the monster she feared worse than her father.

And so, her world turned black as she gave away her control.

A song danced on the tip of her tongue as she walked through the door of the first room, a manic grin spreading across her lips as her anger took control, ripping all conscious thought and awareness from her grip as delinquents remaining somewhat sober noticed her presence.

Shouts and shrieking yells were the chorus that danced inside her head, endlessly swirling like a verse of blood, agony and hate.

The crunching of bones peppered the darkness that had engulfed her with great frequency, jolts of pain and impact motions the only signs that she was taking damage.

She wanted to stop hurting people.

But she couldn't.

And she had nobody to blame but herself.

As the anger and darkness began to recede, the chorus of screams and cries had blended to nothing.

Disorientated and shaken, as Amaya took her first few seconds of conscious awareness, she felt her heart clench painfully at her surroundings.

Bodies lay scattered all around her, limbs disfigured, bloodied beyond recognition.

While she could not hear breathing or voices at all, she could see some were still conscious in spite of their injuries.

She looked down at herself, her body trembling as she found herself covered in blood.

A tearing reflection of the bloodied state that still haunted her since her return.

Her movements from then on were a blur at best.

All energy spent, lost in the ripping throws of the events just been, she vaguely registered clambering up through the manhole access that terrified delinquent had told her about, though little more.

Rain poured from the skies as she eventually found her way back to familiar territory, soaking her from head to toe as it washed away the bulk of the blood that stained her tattered form.

She had her bag, her belongings still inside – She couldn't recall where she had retrieved them from.

Her body ached painfully, though not as severe as the pain in her head, nor the pain inside her heart.

The guilt threatened to drag her under.

She couldn't justify her actions with the excuse that it was to protect her siblings – She'd hurt too many people to warrant that.

Not even as she found herself standing on the front step of her home, could she justify anything she had done to those people.

It was late, sometime after midnight was all she could guess – Most of the nearby houses were dark, and no voices mixed with the dark to show any sign of life.

She struggled to unlock the door.

She honestly felt like she didn't deserve to even be here anymore.

But a need to ascertain that everything was okay inside was what eventually brought her to open the door.

Everything was just as she remembered, nothing really had changed at all. She locked the door behind her as she slowly looked around.

It felt like it had been days since she'd been here.

The lights were on in the kitchen at the dining room, illuminating most of the ground floor inside.

A glance at the clock in the loungeroom gave a time of 1.37am, a perfect explanation to the silence that had descended upon the house.

However, she found herself noticing the smallest hints of red over on the couch, a familiar mop of hair she couldn't miss.

She forced her weary body to walk towards the couch he complained incessantly about, her tearful gaze picking up in the limited light small things that seemed very obvious to her.

Karma sat with his head propped up on an upturned hand, his expression lax from sleep. He'd obviously sat himself there to stay up, but he'd ended up nodding off in spite of himself. The backs of his hands were flecked with scratches around the knuckles, and his usual clothes he wore for school were flecked here and there with blood.

The welling tears in her eyes spilled over as she couldn't help but almost throw herself on him, her arms wrapping around his waist as she buried her face in his chest.

She'd felt him jerk awake with a sudden gasp, the second the bulk of her weight had jostled him, and yet she didn't pull away.

He was silent at first, straightening up slightly against her weight pressing on his front.

She felt a hand gently touch against the aching wetness against the back of her head, and heard a low breath escape him as he pulled his hand away.

'You better have broken every single one of their arms and legs.' She heard him mutter lowly.

With the tears slipping free faster, she managed to nod her head ever so slightly.

A second later, she felt him gently run a hand over the side of her head, furtherest away from her head-injury.

'Good girl.'

---=[Authors Note]=---

In trying to stay true to my avoidance of excessive cliffhanger waits, here is your next chapter :)

Chapter notes:

Chi no Uta - This translates more specifically as Blood Song, which is written as 血の詩 in Japanese if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure you don't need me to explain exactly why this chapter is titled as such xD

All the best, guys~!

<3 Loki-Roki